Trading Time for Money: 7 Steps to Stop Doing It
Many people in the olden days were led to believe that to have a financially secure future, you needed to work for a reliable company for a minimum of 40 hours per week, climb through it ranks, so you can retire with enough money for a comfortable retirement.While this might seem true in the olden days, so many things in the world of business has changed that this concept has been challenged by many.
For one, even the most stable companies have closed down, unpaid overtimes are becoming a norm, and many employees find themselves in the same position for decades and even unto retirement with very minimal salary increases.
This is the reason why there are many former employees now doing freelancing jobs and joining the gig economy which promises them a more flexible work life while also providing better income.
More and more employees have stopped trading their time for money, because many of them have realized that it could be a trap to a life of drudgery.
If you are currently trading time for money, here are a few steps you could take to free yourself:
Note: These information were based from my own experience and from online sources discussing how to escape the trading time for money trap.
7 Steps to stop trading time for money:
1. Most people have to initially trade time for money2. Begin trading task for money instead
3. Automate everything
4. Create digital products
5. Create royalty earning products
6. Hire employees
7. Use your products to sell your other products
Final Words
The Details:
1. Most people have to initially trade time for money
Unfortunately, for most of us, we usually have to begin our career by trading our time for money. Even our schools teach us to become employees.
There are full fledged degrees for business administration, accounting, marketing and so on, but there are hardly any degrees that teach you to become a business person at the onset of your career.
Another thing to consider also is that almost all education degrees are geared towards trading time for money. Business, Science, Engineering, Arts and other degrees mostly trains us to work for a company and not for ourselves.
So, don’t be disappointed if you find yourself trading your time for money by working for a company or someone else. This is because the concept of trading time for money have been institutionalized for ages, way, way before your grandfather’s time.
Times are changing however, there are now many careers where you don’t have to trade your time for money to have a financially secure future, these are mostly in the areas of technology, media, arts and so on.
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2. Begin trading task for money instead
Stay away from work that is eguated with time
As early as you can, you should start trading your tasks for money instead of trading your time for money.
But you might ask: “Aren’t they the same? Aren’t the two of them interchangeable?” There is a big difference between the two: time is different from tasks.
If you trade time for money, you would have to work for the entire duration of your contracted time. If you trade tasks for money, you would only have to work until your contracted task is finished, irrespective of the time that has elapsed.
For example, if you work in an office, you would have to stay put in the office for eight hours even though your tasks are already complete. If you are paid by the task, you can leave the office once your tasks are complete, even though you’ve spent less than eight hours working.
As you can see, trading task fro money is the better option as it gives you more time to do the things you want besides your tasks. It also drives you to work faster and much efficiently unlike just slacking off or working slower just to meet your eight hours work mandate.
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3. Automate everything
The reason why mankind have advanced so much is because mankind have been continuously automating the tasks they used to do by themselves.
If you want to stop trading time for money, you should do the same, especially your most repetitive tasks.
For example, if you find yourself typing the same document draft format 50 times a day, you could create a program that would type the same document draft format 50 times and even more, enabling you to do more work in less the time without you even having to lift a finger.
Automating your tasks is very possible these days with the sheer numbers of productivity softwares, programmable machines, and even robots.
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4. Create digital products
The biggest companies these days are largely software companies: MicroSoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent and so on.
These companies have much fewer employees than other industries like the oil industry for example, with much more employees, capital, and machinery to boot, but with lesser profits than software companies.
And how is this so? This is because software doesn’t need warehouses, inventories, or logistics systems. A software located in a single computer can endlessly be replicated and delivered at no cost via the internet.
This is the reason why you should start creating digital products. It is entirely possible to create a software once and earn from it endlessly. This is unlike a physical product where once you sold it, you can never resell it again.
As you can see, with software, you only need to do a task once (digital product creation) and you can possibly earn from the task forever.
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5. Create royalty earning products
You can also create products that would earn you royalty whether or not you repeat the same task over again.
For example, you can invent something and license it to a company that would sell your invention for you in exchange for paying you royalties.
The invention could be anything: a high tech product, consumer product, book, song, and other intellectual property.
For example, JK Rowling created the Harry Potter novels and became a billionaire not only by selling her novels, but also by licensing Harry Potter IP to toy manufacturers, theme park companies, and media companies.
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6. Hire employees
This is the reason why you are an employee: business owners need you to do tasks for their company.
In exchange for your service, the business owners pay you a fixed salary while they keep all the remaining profits.
As you can see, this arrangement benefits mostly the business owner and not you as the employee. Sadly, this is the reason why businesses grow.
If you ever become a business owner, you would have to do the same if you want your business to grow.
By hiring employees, you are left with more time to do other things, like having more time for personal matters or thru doing more for your business.
The point is this, you hire an employee because you would make more money off them as compared to doing their tasks yourself.
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7. Use your products to sell your other products
You should design your products in such a way that they also sell your other products. This saves you time by not having to market each and every one of your product everytime.
For example, your product packaging can contain advertisements for your other products. You can also put product company leaflets on a product everytime you deliver a product.
Arguably, finding customers for your product is one of the hardest part of doing business, by including all product advertisements to your products, you lessen your job, or your marketing staff’s job, of having to market your product yourself.
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Final Words
The concept of devoting your entire time and energy to a company by devoting a third of your time to a company everyday is being challenged.
Many employees today are not content with trading their time for money if this means having to work for long hours for little pay.
You should begin by trading your tasks for money instead of trading your time for money. Then, you need to be more efficient with your time by automating and delegating your tasks.
Lastly, you should create products that only need to be done once, but would give you a possibility of generating continuous income from it even while you sleep and do nothing more.
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